Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Farewell to Football

What price entertainment?
Violent movies carry a disclaimer that “No animals were hurt in the making,”
but now pro football admits to human brain damage and agrees to pay $765
million as an oops to 4500 wrecked plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the NFL.

Sports, we are told, helps society
sublimate innate savagery, but few lives are destroyed by baseball, basketball,
tennis, golf or even hockey. For one admirer of the skill and grace of quarterbacks and wide receivers, the brutality of the game has reached the tipping point.

This is it.

As the world becomes more
violent, one recalls Barack Obama’s statement that, if he had a son, he would “think
long and hard” about letting him play football.

"They can make some of
these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the
violence they do to their bodies," he said of NFL players. "You read
some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same
problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on.
That's something that I'd like to see the NCAA think about."

But no amount of money can
ease a conscience over watching a game in which hurting people is one of the
aims.

There is enough of that going
on in the real world to shame one over being part of a crowd cheering it on.